perioadă

Forms

perioadă f (plural perioade)^[1] Older texts have a neuter period, plural perioduri: „aceste perioduri le numim vârstele omului” “these periods we call the ages of man”.^[2][3] A neuter periodos, plural periodosuri, also occurs: „la întiiul periodos” “in the first period”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin periodus, with Modern Greek περίοδος (períodos) and French période as further sources: MDA2, DEX, the DLR and Wiktionary give these three sources together.^[3][4][2][1] Tiktin names the Greek and Latin word and the French one.^[5] The Greek word is formed from Ancient Greek περί (perí, “around”) and ὁδός (hodós, “path, road”): first “a going round, a circuit”, it already meant a span of time with recurring events in ancient Greek.^[6][1] Latin took it as a term of rhetoric, “a complete sentence”.^[7] The French word was borrowed in the 14th century, perhaps through Latin.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Dimitrie Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică (1705), in the old form period: „periodul firii cutrierând” “travelling through the course of nature”.^[5][2] MDA2 cites the same work.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word first meant a span of time, and in old texts simply “time”.^[3][2] Early 19th-century texts use it for a stage of life or of a reign: in 1830 a periodical divides the trade of 1829 into „două perioade” “two periods”, before and after the peace.^[2] Scientific senses followed: the geological period, the period of a heavenly body, of an oscillation, of a decimal fraction, and the rows of Mendeleev's table.^[4][3] The old form period also meant menstruation.^[4] In rhetoric and music it is a long, unified sentence or a unit of several phrases.^[4][9]

Timeline

• 1705 – period in Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică.^[5][2]
• 1830 – „două perioade” “two periods” in a periodical.^[2]
• 1929 – Șăineanu's dictionary has only “an interval of time”.^[10]
• 1955–1957 – DLRLC records the period as a unified sentence.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A period of time in which something happens: o perioadă grea; in geology, a subdivision of time smaller than an eră.^[4][3][1] Perioadă de înjumătățire (physics): half-life.^[4] Perioadă de inducție (chemistry): the time a reaction needs to reach its proper speed.^[4][3][1]
2. (astronomy) The time between two returns of a heavenly body to the same position.^[4]
3. (physics) The interval after which a phenomenon repeats itself.^[4]
4. (mathematics) The smallest interval after which a function takes the same values again; the group of digits repeated in a recurring decimal.^[4]
5. (chemistry) Each of the seven rows of the periodic table.^[4]
6. (medicine) The interval between two attacks of a disease;^[4] (obsolete, as period) menstruation.^[4]
7. (rhetoric) A long sentence of balanced, unified structure.^[4]
8. (music) A unit of a composition made of several phrases.^[4]

Word family

• periodic

Related words

• Ancient Greek περίοδος (períodos)

Usage notes

The word is pronounced with the syllables -ri-oa-; the old variant period is neuter.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. perioadă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 348
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 804
5. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. perioádă
6. ^ Babiniotis, Georgios (2010), Ετυμολογικό λεξικό της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσας [Etymological Dictionary of Modern Greek], Athens: Κέντρο Λεξικολογίας
7. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. perioadă
10. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 476
11. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 387